From the tassie forum www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=65770 someone has asked what people use for their long range forecast (apart from Seabreeze of course). I have copy and pasted my response FYI.

Gestalt used this site forecasts.bsch.au.com/gfs_plot.html# prior to Burrum this year . You can set it to whatever parameters you want e.g. 1knot gradients, latitude , longitude etc. Found it to be really accurate (well as accurate as forecasting goes anyway) and gives you 7 days forecast at minimum +/-3 hour or max +/-24 hour intervals.

Hit the "winds + Streams" in the quicklinks just below the "GFS Forecast run" bar, then in "Variables" row put your preferred wind gradient in far right box (it's default is in 5 knot gradients but I set this to two as you get a much more colourful picture ). Then in the "Map Projection" set to Custom and input lat/lon co-ords in for your region, then hit "request plot".

This is the BoMs one I occasionally use as well although clarity/flexibility not as good as above. www.bom.gov.au/marine/wind.shtml

hardie said...

Having studied the wind forecasts intensely over the last 10 yrs, imo anything beyond 48hrs is unreliable. In some stable weather patterns/systems at certain times of the year beyond 48 hrs can be a reasonable predictor but mostly not.

Yep!

Don't load your car based on what the forecast say's, chuck whatever you can shoehorn in there, no matter how outlandish it seems at home, that way when you lob up to the beach you will have your bases covered.

Hardz
If when you are down the beach and the forecast is 20-30 but only blowing 15-20, don't rig a 5 and wait for the wind, this leads only to madness and frustration.

20-30 forecasts
These are only forecast when BOM haven't a clue as to what the weather will be like

elmo said...

Don't load your car based on what the forecast say's, chuck whatever you can shoehorn in there, no matter how outlandish it seems at home, that way when you lob up to the beach you will have your bases covered.

Hardz
If when you are down the beach and the forecast is 20-30 but only blowing 15-20, don't rig a 5 and wait for the wind, this leads only to madness and frustration.

20-30 forecasts
These are only forecast when BOM haven't a clue as to what the weather will be like

I went down yesterday nervous about going out on a shortboard for the first time in ages in the 20-30kts they predicted..blowing gusty 12kt sw so rigged the 6.6m on the big board & hoped when it picked up it would come in slowly..yeah..[}:)] it died to 5 kts with occ 8kt gust..Lucky I took the big board down..I was going to leave it at home..body not happy today after 1.30 of subplaning with big heavy sail ( for me). Still mind is.. nice to get out & I did one nice 'flare 'gybe.

hardie said...

Having studied the wind forecasts intensely over the last 10 yrs, imo anything beyond 48hrs is unreliable. In some stable weather patterns/systems at certain times of the year beyond 48 hrs can be a reasanble predictor but mostly not.

Therefore the forecast for 5 days in advance will be the opposite, i.e. good/bad

Kind of threadjacking here BUT

I know that when there's some Cumulous or Stratocumulous clouds around usually there's a lull in wind and when its clear skies its usually consistent wind. Why is this so? I can't find any info on google

For long range, for quite a while now I have been having success with a combo of windfinder and windguru